What is it with cops these days?

Posted by Kai at 1/26/2008 9:52 AM
Categories: Rants...

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Just what the hell is it with cops these days? I'm not that Goddamned old, but I still remember when cops had a modicum of respect from among most of the community, but these days they inhabit a very nasty place in the minds of most people I know, including (more and more) myself.

"Who gives a shit?", one might ask. Well, I DO! We all should!!! We all have to deal with cops at some point, in some fashion. Those who deal with them on the criminal level, I suppose, "get what they pay for", i.e. they have to accept what they get from what they sow. But the average citizen these days gets from cops what used to be reserved for the criminal element: the attitude that everyone's to be assumed guilty of SOMETHING and, as such, is suspect and to be treated with hostility. This is simply fucked up!

This little rant comes from an encounter I had a couple nights ago when a neighbor's house burned. I approached one of the cops working crowd control and said "You guys are aware that there's an old woman living in that house?" I was answered with a snide "She's right there. We've got it all under control." No 'thanks, yeah she's OK', or 'yes, thanks'. No, instead of some kind of respect for my concern over the well-being of the home's owner, I was greeted with what is becoming the standard cop approach: belligerence. I let it go, knowing that cops are becoming assholes and, after all, they deal with the dregs of society on a daily basis for the benefit of all of us. So later, when I asked the same cop if they knew what started the fire, he answered "Yes!". Period. I waited a second to see if he was going to elaborate but there was no further comment. I wanted to say "So, are you going to let us in on the secret?", but instead asked what it was that started the fire. He told me, "Well, that's the owner's business. She can tell you if she wants."
Now, I'm thinking, "OK, maybe it was something she might not want everyone to know, like that she did something dumb like throwing water on a burning pan full of oil or something". Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, that's my motto. So when another neighbor who had been talking to her walked by, I asked him what had happened. He said that it all started because of a small heater placed too close to flammable stuff in the house. This on a night as cold as any we'd had recently this icy January of 2008!

This asshole cop sees fit to make me feel like a boob for asking about the well-being of a neighbor, and an elderly one at that, then heaps insult on top of it by playing the "I'm a cop and you aren't, so fuck off" game instead of trying on the "Protect and serve" shield that used to exemplify the best of cops and saying something along the lines of "She had a heater too close to something that went up in flames. A good lesson for us all on these cold nights". Simple, basic common courtesy. 

I'm getting real tired of this new bullshit Nazi cop mentality! I used to sympathize when cops bemoaned the fact that they got no respect from the general public, but I'm getting fed up with their holier-than-thou attitudes, the way they assume everyone they come in contact with is somehow inferior to them. Who pays their fucking salaries? What right do they have to treat tax paying citizens as though they were some kind of lowlife? 

Should I be so pissed for such a small slight? In short, no. But I'm not. What I'm pissed about is the fact that this is becoming the standard of treatment one can expect from cops these days. This is how a huge percentage of cops treat the general public now. Get pulled over for a traffic violation and the first thing you can count on is the cop trying to put you in your place, then seeing if he's going to get the major brownie point of giving you a D.U.I and hauling your ass to jail. I had a cop pull me over years back, when getting out of your car to get your ticket was still the norm, and he crouched down behind his door, pointed his fucking GUN at me, and told me to "GET BACK IN THE CAR!!!" I wasn't at all sure this stupid fuck wasn't going to shoot me! Not being one to let such shit go unchallenged, I let the guy know I thought he was a complete asshole (a San Francisco cop!) and, after being let go with my ticket, I flipped him off as I drove off and again at the next stoplight when he drove up next to me, to which he responded with a sarcastic smile and a wave. I felt better, but it was the beginning of a new disrespect for cops in general for me.

My ex brother-in-law was a sheriff in San Mateo County in the seventies. Even back then the new cop mentality has started. He was a nice guy; too nice, apparently, to be a cop. He finally quit the sheriff's department because he couldn't handle the hypocrisy. And it's too fucking bad! We're losing good cops by the minute because they just don't want to be expected to back up people they see as undeserving (other cops with this nasty attitude), don't want to have to live with the new universal disrespect that cops are seeing, and can't justify some of the shit they're expected to do in the course of their daily jobs. Good cops retire every day too, being replaced by these surly fucking little "I-got-beaten-up-in-school-so-I-got-this-badge, now-fuck-with-me!" new age cops that whine more than ever about people having no respect for them. I say too fucking bad! Just like the criminal element of society, asshole cops "get what they pay for". Reap what they sow. Because of my brother-in-law's knowledge of the law, I was privy to the fact (at least back then... it may be different now) that there was no law against telling a cop what you thought of them, as long as you didn't yell it or be physical about it, or do it in a way that could be construed as disturbing the peace. That's why I felt no fear in telling the S.F. cop just what I thought of him. Fair is fair.

A friend is a bartender/bar manager in town. He told me of a local CHP, one of the latest groups to join the ranks of the asshole cop, who drinks in his bar on a regular basis. He doesn't just have one or two but instead gets pretty well looped and then, right before he leaves, says "Give me one more for the road". Now, there's more than just a little irony in THAT statement, from not just a cop, but a CHP, one of the formerly most trusted and respected members of law enforcement we have. "One more for the road", a phrase that used to be thrown around by the masses at cocktail parties, bars... anywhere people gathered to drink. It was accepted in the old days to drink and drive. That old accepted routine has been addressed by the laws and attitudes of today's society, and drunk driving arrests have gone through the roof with cops everywhere giving no quarter to anyone sitting even right at the limit (which, at 0.08% blood alcohol level, is 0.04% LESS than what used to be the LEGAL limit!). The official attitude of cops these days toward drunk driving is that it is NOT GOING TO BE TOLERATED! (Uh, well... unless maybe if you're another cop... and since I'M a cop, I think I know when I'VE had enough, and I'll do what I Goddamned well please!)

And the funniest part of this bullshit is that, when my buddy says to this cop, "Hey, you're a cop! Aren't you worried about getting pulled over?", the CHP tells him, "No, we have a deal with the 'town clowns'", meaning the local city cops. (I don't think the "deal" would be so valid if the local cops knew the CHP referred to them as "town clowns", but I digress.)
The point here is that if cops want some respect, they need to give some respect. I'm sick and fucking tired of having to show respect to people who refuse to show mutual respect to me.

So what do we do? How do we approach the new cop mentality? Is there a way to change this new approach cops have toward law-abiding citizens before it's too late? I don't know, but I do think it's getting more unlikely every day that we just sit back and allow cops to treat us like shit just because they're cops.

My wife's car was recently hit-and-run while parked in our driveway. We called the cops and were told that they were not going to come out. Just like that. "We're too busy to come out for this!" $7,000 worth of damage to her car, the whole ass-end of it smashed and torn off, and the cops wouldn't even come out to see if there was enough evidence to follow up on it and maybe see if they could find the other car involved. I had to ride my bicycle around the neighborhood to see if I could find a car parked nearby with damage to it that was maybe left there in hopes that at least the driver, who we assumed must have been drunk to hit the car where it was, could get away without being arrested for D.U.I. I had no luck, but did achieve a new level of disrespect for those who "protect and serve"!

Our city was one of three listed as a major center for Hispanic gang activity in a recent History Channel special on gangs in America called "Gangland". Right up there with Los Angeles. We have a HUGE gang problem here. Are our cops addressing the issue? I guess it depends on who you ask. The cops in our city find it valuable to cite kids for riding skateboards in town, or smoking in the square. They spend inordinate amounts of time giving tickets for the smallest infractions and handing out their bullshit attitudes to those who have done no wrong to their knowledge, but they seem to stay the hell away from the neighborhoods where gang activity is rampant. They'll huddle together in groups of two or three in town, hovering near places where people might break the new no-smoking-within-however-many-feet-of-a-business law in the hopes of doling out citations for some highly prized brownie points back at the station, but God forbid they get proactive and do something of real value... something that requires effort and finesse. Something that the cops of old would have taken pride in addressing.

I don't have any answers on this issue. The beauty of a blog is that you get to voice an opinion and possibly get responses on issues that will give you insight as to others' feelings on a subject, or help you deal with it. At the very least it is a way to lessen the effects on one's own psyche by employing the "misery loves company" dynamic. It is, somehow, less harmful to your own attitude when you know that others at least share some of your feelings.
 

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